MMOs and game design

Menu

Wow, I’m nearly 80!

I have been the most casual of WoW players since my return near the beginning of the year. I re-joined to try the Refer-a-Friend thing with Spinks and we zoomed through levels 1-40, the bit I was dreading from over-playing them previously.

But then I took a break, the R-A-F thing ran out, and we started getting busy in our lives. So I’ve been shambling along, doing dungeons, questing, ranting about why I couldn’t fly when I first got to Lich King content, ranting about how obtuse parts of the game seemed.. and here I am, about a thumb’s worth of xp away from level 80.

I cheated for two levels and let my husband play my char while I was at Comic Con. He always loved Shaman and has an addiction problem when it comes to MMOs, so this is about the only way he can play – for a limited period of time. But he did me proud, he levelled my first aid (which I left languishing at silk levels) and he kept my jewelcrafting appropriate to my level. He also got me (as I said initially) a couple of levels, from 75-77 – and I could fly again! Hurrah!

How’s it been? Definitely an eye-opener, coming straight from LotRO back to the fully finished Lich King. I felt rushed, not by friends and family, but by the game seemingly focusing on getting those next few levels till you got to Dalaran, the next levels to fly again, etc etc. And I felt fairly inadequate for much of it. Yes, if I’d read quests better I’d have done better, but a lot of them didn’t grab me. Until I got to Grizzly Hills, where I read them all and fell in love with the zone. Let that be a lesson to me. But I got a clue early on with each zone about whether I’d like it or not, and having such a rich choice of places to level was a little intimidating.

Of course, to Spinks, I was a bit of a burden. I’d launch into fortnightly rants about how rubbish WoW is, how hard they make it for no reason when you start Lich King, and that telling me it’d all get better doesn’t help. I didn’t really have the same negative reaction to the Burning Crusade content, probably because the dungeon finder got me through any rough points – I do remember a very negative response to my first bombing runs though, so maybe I had the odd rant then. I’d also prove how noobish I was in the middle on dungeon runs she was trying to explain for me. But she survived, I think and now has been guiding me through more obtuse bits like what the hell the tabard rep system is, why I should/might care, and what tabard I might want (to save me looking it up for myself).

And that’s probably been one of my enduring take-aways from my levelling. Having a very knowledgeable friend/sibling/guild member really made me a bit lazy, but I also didn’t ever feel the need to go read up on the minutiae of the game – but everyone I was playing with had assumed I probably would. I looked up some speccing advice and that was it. To me, it’s been a casual game, getting some cash and a feel for the world again before Cataclysm launches. It’s not really been about being the best, more about being ‘good enough’. Because of that a lot of my focus is heirlooms for alts, crafting that might be useful, getting a vague feeling about zones I like – rather than reading up on how all the systems work. In fact, if you questioned me now, I’d be pretty vague on heirlooms, PvP honor marks, tabards and rep and what the hell a heroic is (except people will inspect my gear, tell me I’m shit at everything and then I get better reward for suffering through it, if we succeed!).

Still, overall, I’ve had fun, and during my ranty times I’ve been online less, but I’ve not given up as I did with previous attempts to return to the game. I’ve plugged away at it and on sunday, I’ll have my first ever level 80 in World of Warcraft.

2 thoughts on “Wow, I’m nearly 80!”

You do realise that I’ve had a similar experience with LOTRO 🙂 I love it, but I also love that I don’t have to go and look stuff up because I can just ask you. I also had a huge boost through Moria from you helping me and through Codies giving everyone a 25% xp boost as a welcome back thing. (And I was really languishing in Moria and getting frustrated, even with that.)

I am also really keen to show you some of the cool questlines that I don’t think you have seen yet.

I do think you are dead right about WoW nudging you forwards more explicitly while you are levelling with promises of this or that cool thing you can have at the next level or so. LOTRO is beautifully laid back and casual in comparison, the only thing I really felt nudged by was trying to get to the next book quest and wanting to get out of Moria. But I think if I’d been levelling with other people, I’d have felt more stressed trying to keep up with them.

I came across another blogpost the other day (unfortunately I dont remember which it was anymore) where it was discussed what the big deal about quitting wow is anyway – I found it somehow very refreshing to think that with MMOs like this, we dont even have to make these rash decisions anymore. you can play it more or less, you can take breaks and come back, but what’s with all the ‘I quit’-resolutions and absolute decisions anyway? I feel this is the right approach, just play the way you can and feel like! there’s something in wow for almost any type of gamer.